With another round of predictably low-turnout municipal
elections behind us in Mesa, Tempe, Queen Creek and Phoenix, and a new
one awaiting Chandler voters this fall and Gilbert voters next spring,
some political reformers are suggesting there's a better way.

They call it ranked-choice voting, or instant-runoff
voting, and they claim it boosts turnout by eliminating the need for
costly, tedious runoff campaigns.

It's worth a look for several reasons. Ranked-choice
voting seems to be gaining attention and favor around the country. San
Francisco went to RCV in 2004 and Minneapolis and Santa Fe are making
the transition. And it may be coming to the Valley; an election-reform
group has succeeded in getting RCV on the fall ballot in Glendale.

Here's how it works: If, for example, three candidates
qualify for the mayoral ballot, that ballot allows voters to select a
first choice and a second choice. When all the first choices are
counted, if one of the candidates fails to garner a majority, the
candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Then the second choices
from the ballots cast for the eliminated candidate are tallied. A
winner emerges in this “instant runoff.”

The more candidates there are running for a given position, the more ranked choices voters will have on their ballots.

Tempe resident and Arizona Republic columnist
Dave Wells, who holds a doctorate in political economy and public
policy and teaches at Arizona State University, is a vocal proponent of
ranked-choice voting. He noted in a recent column in The Tempe Republicthat that city's four City Council runoff candidates had to raise
nearly $45,000 between the primary and runoff elections, much of it
from special interests, to get and keep voters' attention.

Still, only about 22 percent of Tempe's registered
voters bothered to cast ballots in the runoff, despite a lively debate
among the candidates over the city's property-tax rate.

In Mesa, where there was a vigorous mayoral runoff to
replace outgoing Mayor Keno Hawker, turnout was a disappointing 26
percent.

Presumably, many of those who missed the runoff had
thought the March primary was the “city election” and didn't realize
they were supposed to go back to the polls two months later.

Defenders of the existing system say high turnout is
overrated, that voters who are tuned in to municipal issues and
candidates — so-called high-efficacy voters — are the ones who should
decide local elections. Making it easier for less interested — and less
informed — citizens to cast ballots can result in bad local government,
they argue.

But state law already is moving more municipal elections
to the fall, when they coincide with state and national elections, so
many more people will be casting ballots that include everything from
the presidential race to city council contests. Faced with long
primary- and general-election ballots, wouldn't it be better to let
voters focus on their municipal election in November via ranked-choice
voting?